They are miniatures, whose beauty is to be brought out by repeated strokes. A rapid hand often destroys the features. I can conceive a comedy or tragedy to be written in less time than an ode. For in the drama, the characters, like the scene, are drawn somewhat out of nature; and the exaggeration heightens the effect. Wycherley wrote the Plain Dealer in three weeks, and Ben Jonson his admirable Alchemist in six. Boileau took more time to point a couplet.

MASON.

Prior failed lamentably in his serious poetry. Solomon, the fruit of so much toil and anxiety, has proved a frail memorial of his genius*. No poem within my memory bears such traces of the artist ; the versification is elaborated to a degree that becomes painful even in the description of Abra:

And from the golden quiver at her side
Rustles the ebon arrow's feathered pride.

GRAY.

Every man is a parasite to himself; Prior loved what it cost him so many days to accomplish. But I can forgive all its defects for that passage in

* Yet in our day Solomon has found a very warm admirer in Hannah More.

which he portrays with equal beauty and truth, the watchful tenderness of Abra:

But oh, how short my interval of woe!

Our griefs how swift! our remedies how slow!
Another nymph, for so did heaven ordain,
To change the manner, but renew the pain;
Another nymph, among the many fair

That made my softer hours their solemn care,
Before the rest affected still to stand,

And watched my eye, preventing my command.
Abra was ready, ere I called her name,

And tho' I called another, Abra came!

How could the companion of Chloe arrive at such a sentiment?

MASON.

And I would except from my censure of his serious poetry, the paraphrase of St. Paul's exhortation to Charity. Some of the lines are exquisite in their religious tenderness.

Charity, decent, modest, easy, kind,

Softens the high, and rears the abject mind;
Knows with just reins and gentle hand to guide
Betwixt vile shame, and arbitrary pride;
Not soon provoked, she easily forgives,
And much she suffers, as she much believes.
Soft peace she brings wherever she arrives,
She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives;

Then constant Faith and holy Hope shall die,
One lost in certainty, and one in joy;
Whilst thou, more happy power, fair Charity,
Triumphant sister, greatest of the three;
Thy office and thy nature still the same,
Lasting thy lamp, and unconsumed thy flame,
Shall still survive.

Shalt stand before the Host of Heaven confest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest!

These affecting strains of Christian hope must have come from a softened heart. Have you read the new poem of Shenstone?

GRAY.

Shenstone was a gentle Elegiac person, inoffen

sive in poetry and manners.

It was said of Voiture

parties over their tea;

that he wrote only to divert the Bard of the Leasowes seems to have been actuated by a similar motive; with one or two exceptions, his poems might have been scrawled while a Summer shower drove him into his library. But he was amiable, and not destitute of refinement and sensibility; though somewhat of a petit-mâitre. He loved showy colours in dress, delighted in

trinkets and perfumes*; designed the patterns for snuff-boxes; played, sung, and painted flowers. His chief antipathies were to cards and dancing. The origin of that well-known verse,

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found,
The warmest welcome at an inn,

is amusing. Shenstone happened, I think in 1750, to visit his old Oxford friend Mr. Whistler. But Friendship like Love flows rarely in a smooth current. Various little occasions of disquiet arose; but the crowning indignity consisted in a ball, upon which his host lavished much trouble and expense. When the ominous hour approached, Shenstone, regardless of many polite hints from Mr. Whistler, continued lolling at his ease, taking snuff, and indulging at intervals in a sharp allusion to the folly of such triflest. The observation awoke a reply, the dispute waxed warmer every minute, and

* Why, he said, are perfumes so much decried; when a person on his approach diffuses them, does he not revive the idea, which the ancients ever entertained, concerning the descent of superior beings, "veiled in a cloud of fragrance?" This is the most ingenious apology ever offered for the Sir Fopling Flutters of the age.

+ Dancing in the rough, he said, is one of the most natural expressions of joy, and coincides with jumping; when it is regulated it is merely, cum ratione insanire.

P

the poet bade adieu to his friend's residence on the following morning. On his arrival at Edgehill, he wrote those lines in a summer-house in the garden; or, according to another account, on the window of a tavern at Henley *.

MASON.

Probably Shenstone's love of gardening prejudices me in his favour; I certainly think more favourably of his talents; and read with pleasure of his nursing

*

Gray's written opinion of Shenstone may be seen in his Correspondence. "Poor Shenstone! why does he not do better; he hops round his walks, (like a bird in a string, I suppose,) and is afraid to venture beyond his line. And again, with greater severity, "His whole philosophy consisted in living against his will, in a retirement which his taste had adorned; but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it." With this it may not be uninteresting to compare Shenstone's far more flattering character of Gray. "What shall we say then of Mr. Gray, of manners very delicate, yet possessed of a poetical vein, fraught with the noblest and sublimest images, and of a mind remarkably well stored with the more masculine parts of learning."

+ Mason mentions him with kindness in The English Garden.

Nor, Shenstone, thou

Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace,
Who knew'st perchance to harmonize thy shades,
Still softer than thy song; yet was that song
Nor rude nor inharmonious, when attuned
To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love.

Although Shenstone's reputation as a poet almost entirely